New version of Affinity Photo ready to take on Photoshop?

rrblint wrote in post #18264396
From what I can tell so far: When you leave the "Develop Persona" and enter the "Photo Persona", any and all adjustments made are baked into a proprietary ".affinityphoto" file. All pixel adjustments made in the "Photo Persona" are made to this proprietary file which can then be exported to a number of different commonly used files(JPEGs, TIFFs, PSDs, etc.) with all adjustments applied. There is never any change made to your RAW file.

Wh-what? That's a game changer.

It's like a sidecar file for a RAW, maybe? You could test this by deleting a photo's associated "adjustment" file and seeing if the file reverts to its original state ... on an unimportant file of course.

Left Handed Brisket wrote in post #18264409
Wh-what? That's a game changer.

It's like a sidecar file for a RAW, maybe? You could test this by deleting a photo's associated "adjustment" file and seeing if the file reverts to its original state ... on an unimportant file of course.

Not sure LHB. I'll give that a try.

Okay, I tried what LHB suggested above and the adjustments made do disappear. However the ".afphoto" file was side by side with the 17MB RAW file(which is unchanged) and was nearly 100MB, so I think that it is more likely a PSD-like actual photo file rather than a sidecar file.

Affinity Photo is like Photoshop. The Develop persona is like ACR in Photoshop. Once you open a raw image in the develop persona and make changes there, the raw file is converted into an RGB image, just like ACR in Photoshop. AP does not write sidecar files, so if you open the raw file again, none of the settings form the previous conversion are "remembered." There are several requests on the forums for some sort of sidecar file system.

None of the edits made when you open the raw file into the develop persona change the raw file, just like ACR.

The .aphoto file format is like the .psd file format in Photoshop - it is the "native" file format for Affinity Photo, saving layers, etc.

kirk

kirkt wrote in post #18265639
Affinity Photo is like Photoshop. The Develop persona is like ACR in Photoshop. Once you open a raw image in the develop persona and make changes there, the raw file is converted into an RGB image, just like ACR in Photoshop. AP does not write sidecar files, so if you open the raw file again, none of the settings form the previous conversion are "remembered." There are several requests on the forums for some sort of sidecar file system.

None of the edits made when you open the raw file into the develop persona change the raw file, just like ACR.

The .aphoto file format is like the .psd file format in Photoshop - it is the "native" file format for Affinity Photo, saving layers, etc.

kirk

Seriously, you cannot save your RAW edits in this program? That sounds like a very major oversight to me, and one that should be prominently advertised. I'm sure that there must be many out there that like I do will make a full set of edits in the RAW converter, but who will then go away and come back to it later just to be sure. Sometimes it can simply take more than one session of editing to get to where you want to go, even if you don't want to deliberately have time for reflection.

Alan

kirkt wrote in post #18265639
Affinity Photo is like Photoshop. The Develop persona is like ACR in Photoshop. Once you open a raw image in the develop persona and make changes there, the raw file is converted into an RGB image, just like ACR in Photoshop. AP does not write sidecar files, so if you open the raw file again, none of the settings form the previous conversion are "remembered." There are several requests on the forums for some sort of sidecar file system.

None of the edits made when you open the raw file into the develop persona change the raw file, just like ACR.

The .aphoto file format is like the .psd file format in Photoshop - it is the "native" file format for Affinity Photo, saving layers, etc.

kirk

BigAl007 wrote in post #18265899
Seriously, you cannot save your RAW edits in this program? That sounds like a very major oversight to me, and one that should be prominently advertised. I'm sure that there must be many out there that like I do will make a full set of edits in the RAW converter, but who will then go away and come back to it later just to be sure. Sometimes it can simply take more than one session of editing to get to where you want to go, even if you don't want to deliberately have time for reflection.

Alan

I have been playing with AP mostly on the editing side. Using other RAW converters.

But if this is the case, I'll have to agree with AL, but without justifying the response. People will go back to RAW files all the time. If, indeed, AP cannot remember edits from one session to the next, it is an unnegotiable deal killer.

In the mean time...

This is from a moderator in the Affinity Photo forum:

"If you look at the top of each tab for the adjustment in the develop persona you will see a preset dropdown that will allows you do add your own presets based on the current settings. The presets currently only belong to each tab rather than globally, but hopefully this will go towards make things slightly easier for you in the meantime"

As a temporary workaround, OK. As a permanent feature, no way.

But AP's inability to remember edits was also confirmed by a forum moderator in this:

"Currently Affinity Photo doesn't support XMP sidecar files so there's no way to do what you are requesting. Feel free to add this to the Feature Requests section for consideration."

BigAl007 wrote in post #18265899
Seriously, you cannot save your RAW edits in this program? That sounds like a very major oversight to me, and one that should be prominently advertised. I'm sure that there must be many out there that like I do will make a full set of edits in the RAW converter, but who will then go away and come back to it later just to be sure. Sometimes it can simply take more than one session of editing to get to where you want to go, even if you don't want to deliberately have time for reflection.

Alan

Agreed. Going away for a day is for me the best protection against overdoing it in a burst of initial enthusiasm about the image; over-sharpening, over-saturating, whatever. Sometimes my first reaction on day 2 is, "OMG, what was I thinking?"

BigAl007 wrote in post #18265899
Seriously, you cannot save your RAW edits in this program? That sounds like a very major oversight to me, and one that should be prominently advertised. I'm sure that there must be many out there that like I do will make a full set of edits in the RAW converter, but who will then go away and come back to it later just to be sure. Sometimes it can simply take more than one session of editing to get to where you want to go, even if you don't want to deliberately have time for reflection.

Alan

Go to the forum and request the feature, like many others have, of saving a sidecar file. Photoshop was not created in a day - if most folks who use AP in a photography-based workflow use an external raw converter, then this feature takes lower precedence and priority over image editing capabilities.

It is not a deal breaker if you use other raw converters. I think that people expect a fully featured image editor akin to Photoshop because the developers of AP have managed something very close to PS functionality in an incredibly short period of time - remember that ACR is a plug-in to Photoshop, not a native photoshop feature.

Efficient progress apparently breeds unrealistic expectations.

kirk

Well, this is interesting!

I've been shooting Raw only for a bunch of years. I've tried to encourage people who are starting out in Raw shooting to try different alternative processors. I've used ACR and Lightroom pretty exclusively, and have been quite happy with those processors.

I have occasionally used DPP, and it has done what it's designed to do...

Now, there are concerns as far as DPP goes, one of which is the fact that you can't "share" processed Raw files between DPP and other Raw processors. So, if you edit a Raw file in DPP you can't just open that file with its edits showing in an app like ACR or Lightroom. You can convert a file to a tiff or a jpeg, and that's it as far as "sharing" goes, and DPP also doesn 't create a "sidecar"/XMP file,so, no open sharing there. In that sense it sounds like the issue folks are having about Affinity Photo.

A question might be as to whether Affinity can work with DNG files. If so, there may be some flexibility there, But I don't know. hasAnybody worked with Affinity and DNG files?

So then, for those of us who work mainly with Lightroom and/or ACR, is there any approach other than converting to a tiff/jpeg that would make our workflowsomewhat simple or managable? Yeah, if we do an "Edit in Photoshop" then we are dealing with converted files. So maybe we are looking at the same type of workflow? I myself don't do that very often, 'cause I'm happy sticking with my Raw workflow!

tonylong wrote in post #18266108
Well, this is interesting!

...
A question might be as to whether Affinity can work with DNG files. If so, there may be some flexibility there, But I don't know. hasAnybody worked with Affinity and DNG files?

I don't think there is a mechanism in place in AP to write metadata regarding development settings, regardless of whether it is to a sidecar file or directly into a DNG, like ARC/LR. You can open DNGs in AP, but it won't write develop settings into it.

kirk

kirkt wrote in post #18266139
I don't think there is a mechanism in place in AP to write metadata regarding development settings, regardless of whether it is to a sidecar file or directly into a DNG, like ARC/LR. You can open DNGs in AP, but it won't write develop settings into it.

kirk

Well, that's interesting, so I'm wondering what a good workflow approach would be for those working with LR and/or ACR, something that would not just add to your efforts?

it has been my experience that the sidecar files do not transfer from one application to another regardless of what processor is used. It would be a very complicated process and i suspect many features would not translate at all.

edit: and you cant right the changes to the original RAW either.

I do not know if, or eventually how, AP plans to implement some way to register or record development settings for raw files. There are several requests on the forum to also have Serif produce a DAM, so maybe the emphasis in their bigger picture is to work out a DAM that would be the repository for such recording of development settings and forego the individual sidecar approach - I simply have no idea.

There are two issues - one is the fact that AP has NO method for writing develop settings - I can see where this might be a pain if you do a lot of raw processing and are used to working in raw converters where there is an "all-in-one" environment where you can batch images, etc. Also, virtual copies, etc. Totally, I get that. I personally do not use AP's raw converter.

The second issue is the transferability of raw develop settings amongst raw converters - no one has really even attempted to address this issue probably because it is inherently a dead end. Because each converter does so many things in its own way, there is probably no transfer function that would be useful in terms of translating develop settings from X's application into Y's application. So, the fact the AP does not have this is in line with all other raw converters.

AP is a pixel (and vector!) editor that has a lot of things going for it that PS could stand to learn from. Raw conversion in-app is not really its strong suit.

On the more esoteric side of things, AP supports on the fly FFT noise filtering, OCIO support, inferred LUTs, equirectangular and perspective projection and all sorts of things that PS does not, but that are super useful in pixel editing. These kinds of features are ones that people would probably love to see in PS, but Adobe does not care to implement. If you have features you would like an image editor to implement, roll on over to AP's forum and request them!

If I were to suggest a focus for AP's development team, it would be in the area of macro (actions) robustness and the development of an extensibility API for scripting and plug-in development. Currently AP supports many PS plug-ins natively, but provides no API for making your own - hopefully that will change over time.

kirk

OK so AP is primarily a pixel editor, that's fine and perfectly acceptable. There are already a lot of programs that are only pixel editors, starting with the most well known one of the lot, Photoshop. PS doesn't have a built in RAW converter, it uses a plug in, which like every other program of its type has a method for saving the settings that should be used by the software for each image. It's not like there aren't multiple ways of doing just that. Sidecar files, a big database, and writing the data to the RAW file as metadata are just three common methods that are used by different programs. Actually Adobe Lightroom will use all three of those options depending on settings and file type. So there are plenty of options to chose from when it comes to this functionality.

If you want your software to be taken seriously why would you even consider including a feature if it is not possible to record the settings you used to make some set of edits to an image? Even if they are required to be done in a non-destructive method? I'm sure that there are users of RAW converters that don't have an associated pixel editor who would be happy to have another editor to chose from. So why seem so unprofessional to include such a poorly designed feature in your program? Or can you suggest another converter that does this? I'm pretty sure that even the Canon RAW process, which was the Canon provided software before DPP allowed you to save the conversion settings. Although it was by far the worst piece of photo processing software I have ever used; bar none!

So I'm pretty sure every other RAW processor has a mechanism to save the conversion settings for an image, and some like LR also incorporate lots of other DAM functionality into that process. I wasn't suggesting that they should go that far. Given that every RAW processor has it's own set of very specific conversion parameters it is simply not possible to have a method of utilising the values saved for one converter program with a different program, since the data would not match between programs.

Alan